Broken Silence
by SMAC Fanatic
Summary: My first TA story - please r


What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machines escalated into a war which has decimated entire worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination. Both sides crippled beyond repair, the remnants of their armies continue to battle on ravaged planets, their hatred fuelled by over four thousand years of total war. This is a battle to the death. For each side, the only acceptable outcome is the complete elimination of the other.  
  
The Core and the Arm have been fighting for more than four thousand years. Their armies are almost spent; worlds are left barren behind them, destruction follows in their wake, and resources are used and the shells of planets thrown away like garbage as they pass.  
  
A green Arm cloning ship pinwheels slowly across the coruscating network of stars and solar systems, its engines long ago destroyed by Core ships and the red logo on its side scorched and blackened. The occasional Arm cloning pod tumbles lazily towards a blue-green globe. The warrior inside is kept in suspended animation until a breathable atmosphere is found. A Core Consciousness Unit travels endlessly onward on autopilot, its gleaming silver hull patched with holes where it was looted for resources by Arm troops.  
  
Very few worlds are left habitable in these days - the Arm planet Empyrrean and its moons are among the few relatively untouched, as is Core Prime, Core's homeworld. Yet these few bastions of hope will eventually fall, as one side gains the supremacy that the two have fought to achieve for so long.  
  
*****  
  
The Commander sighed. Like it or not, they were going to lose the base, and he'd better not be anywhere near it when it fell, since his suit's self-destruct mechanism would undoubtedly destroy the Galactic Gate which led from this planet, Thalassean, to Arm's home planet, Empyrrean, leaving Arm forces on Thalassean with no hope of reinforcements. Resignedly, he activated the emergency call beacon to the nearby Atlas air transport. Automatically, the Atlas lifted off, thrusters screeching, opened its three electromagnetic clamps, and lifted him off the ground. The autopilot transported him to the neighbouring secondary base, then deactivated its clamps, dropping him gently to the ground. As the transport's engines cut out and it dropped sedately to the ground beside him, he watched sadly as the last Defender missile tower gave way under the relentless barrage from the super-heavy Core Goliath tanks. The structure crumbled, swayed, and fell, crushing beneath it a heavily damaged construction vehicle which had been trying desperately to repair the tower. With the final Defender destroyed, and few mobile anti-aircraft units remaining, Core air units would flood the base, overwhelming it with a combination of bombs, missiles and torpedoes. Already the first Avenger light aircraft were rushing in the direction of the base, their missiles streaking towards their targets. Although not very powerful, the missiles' guidance systems offered an unerring aim and the shots nearly always found their mark. Decreasingly few Freedom Fighters and Hawk stealth planes remained to face the onslaught. There had been too many mobile AA units thrown against them, and the numbers of Arm Brawlers and Phoenixes had steadily dwindled, despite the Advanced Aircraft Plant's valiant attempts to slow the decline. The ground forces, too, were diminishing against the continual assault from Core's troops, ranging from the ordinary A.K. Kbot through to the more advanced Kbots, including Cans and the nimble Pyros with their deadly flame-throwers. The Core task force also included a variety of tanks (incorporating Goliaths, Diplomats, Reapers and Pillagers) with Deleters accompanying them to prevent Arm Guardians from targeting them until the last minute. The Big Bertha cannon on the nearby mesa was able to get a few shots in, until it was deactivated for fear of deaths from friendly fire. The Commander realised, somewhat belatedly, that this had been a bad idea. The few friendly fire casualties suffered had been far outweighed by the widespread destruction of enemy units. He wondered for a second about bringing the Bertha back on line, but with the loss of two of their energy storage facilities and the capture of another by the enemy Commander they probably wouldn't have the energy to fire it.  
"Where did we go wrong?" muttered the Commander in anguish. "Oh, Rachelle, if only you were here now..."  
  
From his vantage point on the mesa, by the secondary base, he saw the reclamation of the defensive double barrier of Dragon's Teeth by seven construction vehicles begin. This was pure propaganda by the Core - both sides knew that the enemy Commander could quite easily have walked in and done considerable damage to the Dragon's Teeth by way of the Disintegrator Gun while getting ample protection from Core units, but this was a better way. It said, we have the production and the forces to waste several construction units on a task we could easily perform without such losses. Resistance is futile; we are far too powerful for you.  
  
Although the remaining Guardians, Sentinels and Light Laser Towers pummelled away at the armour of the construction vehicles, the firepower of the Core units kept any Arm mobile elements from interfering. Even the combined strength of all the stationary defences was still too little to make any great impact upon this force. The first row of Teeth was breached quickly, with the loss of only two vehicles. The second took a while longer - the inaccuracy of the Guardians, which had taken out one Tooth already, was reduced, but a Sentinel and a Light Laser Tower fell to the continuous fusillade of missiles from the Diplomats.  
  
Once the Dragon's Teeth were rent apart, the Core units rushed in, guns blazing and missiles, bombs and torpedoes raining down from the unchallenged skies. By this time a Construction Kbot, recalled from the melee, had repaired the Commander and he stood with the second line of defence, D-Gun blazing, determined to make the most of their shrinking energy store. Scores of Weasel light tanks, Level 1 Kbots and Instigators fell before the D-Gun, but this was only the first wave of assault. The lighter troops had been dispatched to soften up the base defences while the tougher stuff prepared to wade in - charging up their weapons, making sure they chose the right targets, etc. For every Weasel or Instigator that fell, there were four heavy-duty tanks waiting in the wings, and for every Kbot destroyed by the D-Gun, there were many Roach crawling bombs being shipped to the front by air transports.  
  
Lucky we're not near any water, the Commander thought to himself, or we'd be having to defend against three different types of units.  
In attempting to bring its guns to bear on heavier and more rewarding targets, a Guardian plasma battery mistakenly locked onto a Dragon's Tooth, one of the few remaining, and fired. The Dragon's Tooth fell instantly, having been weakened by the reclaiming attempts of the construction vehicles (of which there was now only one remaining), and an endless stream of Core attackers poured through the gap. Catching the defenders unawares, this new threat had time to destroy seventeen Arm units, a substantial amount, before the Arm soldiers fought back, missiles from their Merls streaking into the thick of the enemy and Sentinels raking the foe with their laser fire. Unfortunately, a Roach had seized the opportunity to widen the gap, and as the Core tanks held back, self-destructed in a flash of brilliance. The blast radius took out three more Dragon's Teeth from the formation, and Core tanks and Kbots rushed through, firing a steady, deadly stream of laser and plasma cannon fire. Three Sentinels and countless Kbots and tanks fell, until Arm troops rallied and managed to bring some of their Guardians to bear on the attacking force. The flood settled down to a steady stream of assailants, flowing through the gaps in the barricade. However, Arm construction units had scrambled to build a second array of bastions, the slightly more expensive fortification walls. These would protect the Gate until the hoped-for reinforcements arrived.  
  
Far away, on the Arm home planet of Empyrrean, the Ruling Council of Arm was in a severe dilemma. They wanted to send a task force of reinforcements to the beleaguered forces on Thalassean, but three Roach crawling bombs had recently materialised from the other side of the Galactic Gate (dropped off by Core Valkyrie air transports during a period of relaxed vigilance by Arm). These three Roaches threatened to detonate themselves the instant an Arm unit came into view, with a blast quite capable of destroying the Galactic Gate. Luckily, three new Spider tanks had just been built and deployed, but it would require precision timing to disable all the bombs at exactly the same time. Three automated Atlas transports were on hand to pick up the Roaches the moment they were neutralised, to carry them to a secluded valley and there self-destruct. Slowly, ever so slowly, the three Spiders crept closer and closer to their targets, the operators knowing that one false move could spell the destruction of the Galactic Gate.  
  
Meanwhile, back on Thalassean, the besieged Arm forces were weakening badly. The cracks in their fortress were shored up by only a few Kbots and the lighter, cheaper tanks. Flash tanks, hiding behind fortifications, popped out to pepper the aggressive enemy with their EMGs, and PeeWees did the same. But their numbers were desperately low, and the factories just couldn't produce quickly enough to supply the fragile front line. Soon, very soon, the overwhelming, unrelenting barrage of fire from the Core troops would wear Arm down. Can Kbots finally made it to the front line, after trudging slowly through the ranks upon ranks of Core infantry, and unleashed lethal laser cannon bolts on the defenders. Smoking wreckage littered the battlefield, and debris from ruined planes fell thickly from the sky. Some of it was reclaimed by the few enduring construction vehicles, but most was destined simply to lie there and smoulder.  
The conflict was almost decided. Most of the Arm stationary defences had been destroyed. More than three-quarters of the Arm Guardians were reduced to smoking hulks, and all the Light Laser Towers lay in ruins, fit only for scrap. The Defenders were no more, the single Annihilator cannon destroyed before it had fired more than five shots. The relentless salvoes from the Core plasma cannon took their toll on the Arm defences as punishment for the massacre of their fellows, and the battle swung heavily in favour of the Core when the final Arm Sentinel toppled from its moorings and smashed into the scarred body of a Jeffy. The Jeffy exploded, spattering the combatants with red-hot shards of metal. A fireball erupted from its fuel tank, and burning petrol showered around the immediate area. As the Core troops' eyes strained to get used to the sudden dimness following the explosion, they saw something quite unexpected.  
  
Back on Empyrrean, the Spider assault tanks had been steadily closing in on the Roaches for quite some time. The Atlases had been set to Guard, and hovered above the Spiders like overprotective mothers. Preparing for a do-or-die assault, the Spiders' commanders gritted their teeth, synchronised their attack via radio, and went for it.  
"OK, you lot," squadron leader Lex Antares barked into his microphone. "It's do-or-die time, and I'm counting on you motley crew of scumbags to do! Now let's go!"  
The first Roach went down without a sound, its systems reduced to ionised wiring by a single burst of fire from the first Spider. Even as the Atlas disengaged and flew in to load up, the second Roach was hit by the second burst, and its systems also disrupted.  
The third Spider's pilot only realised he had technical difficulties when his cannon failed to fire. The build-up had to go somewhere, and discharged itself into the Spider's systems, temporarily preventing it from firing. Cursing impotently, the pilot watched and waited for the blast that would overwhelm his tank and destroy the Galactic Gate, and with it all hopes of retaining Thalassean.  
  
When the third Spider didn't fire as planned, the other Spiders knew something was wrong. This momentary hesitation gave the last Roach's pilot the chance he needed. Unfortunately for him, the Ruling Council of Arm had managed to put up a jamming net around his craft, disabling its attack function. However, they had failed to jam his self-destruct countdown, and this he hurriedly initialised.  
Luckily for the Ruling Council, the last Atlas's autopilot system kicked in, racing in and clamping firmly onto the Roach's hull. The lift thrusters powered the ship upwards, and the main engines pushed for the limit of the Roach's blast radius. The other two Atlases were both racing in exactly the opposite direction, trying to get their charges out of range before the other detonated. It would be tight, but they just might make it. Their engines squealed, pushing them to the limit. Would they make it? Every ounce of power those ships had was thrusting, driving onward, attempting to save the all-important Galactic Gate.  
  
During this desperate time, the Core armies had just received a nasty shock. An Arm cloning ship had entered orbit, and spewed out two score of cloning pods. These hit the earth with a series of soft thuds. More than two thirds landed within the battle area, and instantly the green chrysalises peeled back to reveal fully generated fighting machines, from Fidos, Zeus and Zippers to Merls, Lugers and Bulldogs. This would give the Arm troops a much-needed respite from the constant attacks.   
"Here comes the cavalry!" whooped Nienna Kinarta on all wavelengths, as her Fido assault Kbot ploughed into the thick of the Core army.  
The newcomers charged into the battle from the Core left flank, hitting hard with rockets and lasers. More than ten Core tanks fell before the other Core tanks and Kbots began shooting. Suddenly the Core Commander walked out through the melee and began reclaiming metal from wreckage. The Arm Commander saw this as a perfect opportunity - if the enemy Commander could be destroyed, the Core armies would be like so many headless chickens. He retreated (so that the other Commander's self-destruct radius would not catch him) and barked into his communicator,  
"Spider squad 5, paralyse the enemy Commander! Atlas 2-5A7, prepare for pickup!"   
  
The Core Commander's radar picked up the Spiders before they reached it, and swivelled to face them head-on. A fourth had been dispatched to attack from behind, and was steadily crawling towards the target. Unexpectedly, the opponents' Commander failed to draw the Disintegrator Gun, and instead fired on the oncoming Spiders with a mere laser. Two easily got past that, and they and the rear-attack Spider had little trouble paralysing it. The Atlas transport picked the Commander up and flew out into the midst of the battlefield, hovering over Core troops. While the automatic targeting systems on the Arm units zoomed in on the enemy Commander, the Core chose the Atlas as its nearest target. Missiles and rockets streaked toward the transport, and nearly all hit it full-on. The Atlas blew up spectacularly, as did the enemy Commander (as transported units always did when the transport took a critical hit), but the battle suit didn't take out nearly as many Core elements as it should have. Too late the Arm Commander saw that this had all been a trap, for, seconds before the Atlas exploded, a radar profile from a nearby Flash tank identified the 'Commander' as a fake, a fraud, a decoy. Whilst the whole operation had been going on, the Arm units were distracted, and became complacent. Too many had been destroyed, and there was now a clear pathway open nearly to the Galactic Gate itself. Core Weasels led the way to draw fire, whilst behind them came Reapers and trundling Goliaths, intermixed with Can Kbots and an overhead full-on assault of Rapiers and Vamps. The attack was devastatingly successful. The last crumbling remnants of Arm defences were swept away in a positive flood of attack; the last Brawler and the last Freedom Fighter fell from the skies, brought down by the twin missile salvoes of the Vamp stealth fighters. The new arrivals were powerless to stop it; all they could do was peck impotently at the stragglers. The Core Commander (the real one, this time) strode through the smouldering wrecks and walked confidently up to the Galactic Gate. The battle suit's nanolathe extended, and the capturing process began.  
  
  
BOOM! The explosion rocked the entire area, flattening trees and causing widespread forest fires on Empyrrean. The last Roach had self-destructed, taking with it the Atlas and one of the Spiders. The other two watched as the blast radius spread outward in adrenaline-induced slow motion - would they, too, be destroyed?  
As the explosion spread outwards, the Spider pilot whose vehicle was closest to the site came out of his trance, revved his engines and sped off. Looking in his rear-view sensor, he saw the raging fires reach out, trying to engulf his tank. It was gaining, but it grew weaker even as it gained. In the final few seconds before he was overwhelmed by the raging heat, the pilot swerved his vehicle aside to avoid a rock. Had he kept going, he would have survived - if just barely. As it was, the Spider crumpled and melted under the intense heat, and he was burnt to death.  
The other Spider saw her fellow fall, swerved around and headed off in the opposite direction from the blast. She escaped unscathed - or partially unscathed. As it was, her guidance systems were burnt to a crisp, although the tank remained structurally intact. Unable to move, the Spider creaked to a halt.  
Luckily, the blast radius didn't reach the two Atlases, who sped on their way and touched down in the deserted valley. Just as they were about to initiate the self-destruct countdown, a lone A.K. Kbot rushed out of the surrounding forest and began firing at the transports. Heavily damaged though it was, the A.K. seemed determined to destroy at least one of the Atlases.  
"Die, evil Arm scum!" it shrieked as it continued its crazed kamikaze attack.  
The transports were only too happy to oblige. Their self-destruct countdowns were initialised remotely, and in five seconds' time they and their Roach cargo exploded impressively, reducing the A.K. to a pile of smoking rubble.  
  
The instant the debris from the first explosion settled, the relief force of Zeus, Zippers, Fidos, Merls, etc. raced forward and dived into the Galactic Gate. Their pilots saw, through their viewscreens, the landscape around them streak forward as they accelerated to interspeed and flew toward Thalassean. Suddenly, the lead Zeus' pilot gasped as he saw a Core Weasel tank heading the other way, a ghostly image as the actual tank flashed past, leaving its likeness imprinted for a few seconds on interspace. Then a positive river of Core units began to stream past, including Goliath super-heavy tanks, Diplomat missile launchers and assorted advanced Kbots. Then - horror of horrors - his worst fears were realised as a semblance of a Core Commander streaked past!  
  
The forces on Thalassean were now roundly beaten. The last of the Dragon's Teeth had been destroyed and the Core had worn down their units so much that they could no longer defend against the continual air attacks. All Arm units with AA capabilities were now no more than piles of scrap metal. The bombardments from the Rapiers and Hurricanes never ceased, and a straight pathway to the Galactic Gate was finally established. The march began. Instigator light tanks and Raiders led the way, followed by advanced Kbots and the heavier tanks, such as Diplomats and Goliaths. Bringing up the rear, the enemy Commander was about to enter the Gate when a single Flash tank and a PeeWee, both heavily damaged and trailing smoke, emerged from behind a rock and began peppering the Commander with their lamentably ineffective fire. The Commander could have destroyed them with a few laser shots, but chose instead to draw the Disintegrator Gun and fired directly at the Flash. As it disappeared beneath a cloud of dust, the PeeWee raced forward and began desperately stabbing at the Galactic Gate's controls, trying to close off the interspatial rift before the Commander could reach it. The Commander merely turned and almost casually fired the laser. Damaged as it was, the PeeWee had no chance, and burst apart with only two shots. The wreckage sagged inwards as the internal power supply blew and melted the suit with its intense heat.  
The enemy Commander stepped forward and reached one arm forward into the interspatial rift. The Arm Commander swore till his dying day that he heard a ripple of derisory laughter before the interspatial currents pulled the enemy inside and accelerated it to the mind-numbing interspeed.  
Instantly, the Arm Commander opened a trans-planetary communication channel to Empyrrean and spoke directly to the Ruling Council.  
"The enemy Commander and a large amount of Core forces are now approaching Empyrrean. We tried to deactivate the interspace matrix, but were unsuccessful. I am proceeding with all possible speed, and my armies will follow me."  
Quickly, he stepped up to the Galactic Gate and punched in the interspatial code that would allow him to travel at twice the normal interspeed. This done, he stepped into the matrix. The planet blurred around him as he accelerated to interspeed and shot off in the direction of Empyrrean.  
Seconds later the first Zeus Kbot tumbled out onto the rough ground and began a babble of information.  
"Enemy forces...Commander...Empyrrean...warn...Council..." was all the nearest Stumpy could make out.  
"We know, we know, the Commander just went through the Gate to Empyrrean to try and deal with the forces. All of Empyrrean's armies are being made available to him, including the new weapons and units stolen from the Core Contingency programme. We're just about to follow him through to back him up."  
"He...he went through alone? But he'll be slaughtered!"  
"Fool!" jeered a nearby Samson. "Empyrrean has enough fusion power plants to keep our Commander cloaked for centuries!"  
"We must go, without further delay!" urged a nearby PeeWee. Charging forward, he dived into the Gate. Half a second later, the accelerating forces exerted such stress on his suit that it and he were ripped to infinitesimally small shreds, destined to appear on Empyrrean as a cloud of microscopic particles.  
"First, we have to slow the Gate down," murmured a Hammer, somewhat belatedly.  
The Stumpy rolled forward and began a direct interface with the Gate, slowing down the transference rate to half of what it had been.  
"It's now safe," he broadcasted. "All units except those assigned to emergency base defence, please enter the Galactic Gate. I'm sure the Sentinels and Guardians - or rather what's left of them - can cope perfectly well with any Core resurgence. After all, there is only one factory remaining to Core, and extremely limited resources."  
Even as he spoke, the tanks, Kbots and aeroplanes began accelerating towards the Gate and plunged into the interspatial rift. The relief force was on its way.  
  
The Ruling Council picked up the incoming forces long before the Zeus did. Luckily the four thousand years of total war asserted themselves slightly before the countless years of bureaucracy. It was this that saved Arm's homeworld from being completely overrun by Core. The instant the long-range proximity alarms went off, troops were dispatched to the Galactic Gate to Thalassean. A squad of newly-developed Podger mine-layers was sent by Atlas to begin construction of a ring of mines around the Gate. All the new units, stolen so bravely from the Core Contingency development, began to make their way towards the Gate - seaplanes came out of hiding from the rivers and seas; hovercraft powered up their air cushions; Infiltrators sat cloaked around the Gate, waiting to report any sign of Core; Pelicans swooped in from their watery retreats; Mavericks took up their positions; even a few Decoy Commanders lumbered to the spot. Three newly-commissioned Ambusher pop-up heavy cannons were made ready, fully-charged and able to survive even a nuclear strike in their retracted state. There was no chance of any Core units getting through. Swarms of ground units rushed to the site, scores of aircraft hastened to be part of it. Even ships in the seas around prepared, in case of an unexpected naval or air strike. Every type of unit imaginable was there.  
  
Rushing onward through interspace, the Core Commander activated a control which drew on power from the Core Central Consciousness to prepare a Level Three cloaking field around the Gate at the other end. Such fields required amazing amounts of power, but the hidden Core satellite orbiting high above could provide a field that could only be penetrated by the closest units. And these would be destroyed quickly.  
  
Behind them, the Arm Commander drained his suit's power to initiate his cloak - as soon as he came to Empyrrean he would be supplied with all the power he ever needed, but for now he must keep himself hidden.  
  
Following him, his forces streaked onward, trying desperately to prepare for the conflict which must soon come. Pitifully few of the original forces had survived, and those which had were heavily damaged. Luckily, they had brought some construction units with them, which would begin repairs the second they arrived whilst the reinforcement squads held off the Core armies.  
  
On Empyrrean, the Galactic Gate began to hum, then a silver nimbus appeared around the entryway as the interspace matrix started up. This nimbus slowly spread, until it seemed that a pool of quicksilver had opened up before them. The interspatial rift was fully open. The rift rippled, as it always did when a transfer ended.  
But nothing emerged...  
  
A single Weasel tank was the first to arrive on Empyrrean. Even though its orders told it to return fire only, the gunner panicked, cut off from the Core Consciousness. Swinging round in the gun turret, he sighted on what appeared to be an Arm Commander and fired, three short bursts. Even though the Arm radar field was blocked by the cloaking field, the decoy Commander still managed to target the Weasel, but to its crew's surprise, it failed to draw the expected D-Gun and simply fired its light laser. Suddenly, the gunner realised what had happened, and radioed down to the pilot. She quickly swung the vehicle away from the line of fire, just as her sensors, distorted after the interspace trip, told her of the existence of the cloaking field.  
  
The pool of quicksilver rippled again, but still the Arm forces were unable to detect anything. The Decoy Commander continued to fire impotently at the spot where the Weasel had stood.  
  
The rest of the Core forces were now on Empyrrean. The enemy Commander ordered them to proceed to a nearby forest clearing, where their base would be built, and instructed the cloaking satellite to move the field accordingly. As punishment for its premature actions, the Weasel had all its thought patterns removed by the Commander's nanolathe, and it automatically shut down, now defenceless and waiting to be revealed as the cloak moved away.  
  
The Arm Commander stepped out onto Empyrrean and took in the situation at a glance. He had cloaked the millisecond that his speed would allow without burning out the cloaking mechanism. Being under a cloak himself, he could vaguely make out the wavering shapes of Core units, but it was as though a fog covered them. He decided to remain under his cloak, but ordered the units nearby to head to cut the troops off.  
  
Seeing this, the Core tanks began to veer away, but the enemy Commander ordered them to keep their heading - the forest clearing ahead would be perfect for their base.  
  
*****  
  
Some time later, the Arm Commander was replaced by three Infiltrator Kbots who took up strategic viewing positions around the area. Being cloaked themselves, they too could vaguely see the Core units - they had now repaired almost all their damaged units, put up energy generators and metal extractors, and built a few factories, which were churning out extra troops. However, they still had nothing like the defence force on Empyrrean. Since there had to be a Core cloaking satellite in orbit, several scout spacecraft had been dispatched to locate it, and a battlecraft to bring it down. As soon as the satellite's destruction had been effected, the Core cloak would drop, and Arm could attack in force and purge this threat from the face of Empyrrean.  
  
While this was happening, the Core forces had almost reached the edge of Arm's field of vision. The minute they left, the cloaking field could be reduced to a Class 1 Jamming Field, to protect them from Arm radar. However, the Core Commander had done a lot of homework, and found one of the few places still uncovered by the radar. This was the said forest clearing, which could only be reached by a circuitous route along the jungle paths. One false move, one missile fired in anger, and the entire forest could go up in flames, injuring or destroying everything in its path as it ravaged the face of Empyrrean. Luckily, lasers were safe to fire within the confines of the wood, as were plasma cannon, up to a point, but if a critically-damaged unit took a hit and blew, the resulting explosion would have the same, if not worse an, effect. Therefore, the Commander opened a channel to all troops: "You will all have to be incredibly careful as to how you tread - either that or all your brainwave patterns will be removed, you will be put on autopilot and driven out into full view to be destroyed!"  
  
  
The Arm Commander raced to report to the Ruling Council of Arm. He was quickly brought before them, and told a staccato version of the story. They knew precisely where the Core army was, their strengths and weaknesses. The Core forces had reached the clearing without mishap, to find the sad, tattered remains of an ancient Core base, established on Empyrrean many years ago and then forgotten about. Once the place had been a stronghold for Core, but the base had expanded beyond its limits, and the radar had picked them up. Then they had had to send the offending units out to face the Arm units sent to investigate, otherwise the whole base would have been uncovered and destroyed. A few survivors were captured and taken as prisoners. Their thought patterns were still under interrogation in the Arm computers, but so far had managed to resist all attempts to extract information from them. Recently, one had escaped, contrived to find a communications port, and downloaded herself into the nearest Core unit, a Weasel, now suffering from severe schizophrenia.   
  
From what the escaped pattern could tell the Core, the base was temporarily safe. When the belated reinforcements had arrived, the base had consisted of fourteen assorted units, mostly level 1, several energy generators, a Kbot lab and a heavily-damaged vehicle plant, still being slowly repaired by a single, smoking construction Kbot. The Commander's first action was to re-link them to the Central Consciousness via the signal booster. Then, the Construction Kbot and Vehicle Plant were repaired, along with any other damaged units. More resources were scouted out and carefully exploited, and more factories set up. More units were constructed - and they would be needed, since the forces on Empyrrean were the strongest Arm force known to Core. Since the theft of the Core Contingency technology, the Arm forces had grown in strength. Though Core had striven to keep this technology from Arm, an Arm spy had somehow managed to confound the Core defences and stolen the prototype plans. Though the Arm rearguard had fought bravely as the spy escaped, the pursuit had continued, hopping from planet to planet, to backwaters where little had happened for hundreds of years, to worlds torn apart by the fighting between Core and Arm. Eventually, after searching many planets, the Core finally caught up with the spy on the planet of Ocrea. Although she had time to throw the plans into the Galactic Gate leading to Empyrrean (just before it automatically self-destructed), the spaceborne relief force arrived too late, and she was never seen again.  
  
  
The Arm Commander sighed. Ever since being promoted to Chief of Operations on Empyrrean, his life had been nothing but one long frustration. The pure bureaucracy of it all so irritated him; it got in his way at every turn. "Why did Arm ever put up such a Ruling Council?" he wondered out loud. The Arm's primary job was survival, and then destruction of Core. The Ruling Council were forever blocking his requests for a direct advance. Well, whether they liked it or not, Core were to be wiped from the face of Empyrrean as soon as their satellite was found and destroyed. And that would not be long...  
For already battlecraft were streaking into orbit, powering round the path on which the satellite was last seen. Since it was currently fabricating a cloaking field around the Core army, it couldn't possibly be hiding itself. It was only a matter of time before it was discovered, and the last possible refuge of the Core forces rooted out and atomised.  
  
*****  
  
In the Central Consciousness of Core Prime, a single patterned mind awoke from its enforced sleep, and began to fling itself desperately against the barriers in place around it, as it had for seventeen years. Suddenly, without warning, the restraints fell for a split second, but it was all the tortured mind needed. In a moment it was off and away, speeding down the circuitry, frantic with fear, rushing to get away. A semi-automated guard post flashed into life not far down the circuit. It prepared its ionising weapon to cut off the mind's escape route, but the consciousness was too quick for it. It concentrated for but a split-second, sending an ion burst into the artificial brain, and the guard died of fatal psychosis. Speeding onward, the mind wondered fleetingly why there was so little security around its cell; then it realised that the barriers placed around it were the most sophisticated known to the human race. It reflected briefly on what had caused the security to go down for the first time in seventeen years; then gave up and kept running.  
  
  
The Arm Commander was now ready for the final push on into Core territory, overriding the Ruling Council and obliterating Core forces on the green face of Empyrrean. All his troops were in position, from the lowliest PeeWee to the powerful Shooter sniper Kbots. The stolen technology from the Core Contingency program was proving incredibly useful. Already, Eagle radar planes were on patrol high above the Core base, their wide-range radar transmitting precise data back to the ground troops. The Infiltrator SPY Kbots had proved themselves invaluable until the arrival of the Eagles and the discovery, after long hours of painstaking analysis, of the cloaking field's frequency. Now they could see the Core units perfectly well. Big Berthas and Annihilator heavy lasers were all trained on their targets, Ambushers and Guardians prepared to cut down any stragglers, and Sentinels and Light Laser Towers got ready to give covering fire. Even a solitary Vulcan, standing high on a mountaintop nearby, began to charge its plasma cannon, getting set for a high-frequency bombardment of the Core base. All these units were accompanied by Erasers or Jammers to hide them from enemy radar. The final assault was almost ready to begin!  
  
*****  
  
Long ago, the Core Commander had allocated radar Jammers to scout the area, they being the only units accessible to Core which could not be picked up by enemy radar. The Commander knew of the preparations being made for the ultimate strike against their base, and had ordered construction of as many defences as resources would allow. Meanwhile, power was being stored in the battle suit's backpack for the cloaked trip to the Galactic Gate, to return to Core and appeal for reinforcements. As it was, Arm had erected a communications jamming field around the planet, and only the scratchiest of messages had actually reached Core Prime. The Commander would have to return incognito to the Core homeworld and inform them of the situation. However, it would be a risky business - if any Arm unit came within a certain distance of the Commander, the cloak would dissipate, and the Commander would become visible to all Arm units on Empyrrean. If that happened, chances of survival were incredibly slim. The path to the Gate was covered by several Guardians and a few Annihilators, and even a Commander's battle suit wouldn't stand up for long against that sort of barrage. So, cloaked and skulking in shadows, behind trees, etc., wherever possible, the Commander crept slowly but surely towards the Gate.  
Of course, there was just one little problem. The activation of the Gate couldn't fail to be missed, but luckily the Commander had procured the access code during the last journey, and knew how to open the Empyrrean Gate. Whether the Core Prime Gate would open to allow a transfer from Empyrrean was a riskier business. The only thing to do was to hope. Only a Commander had the data recording and transferral technology and the cloaking technology to be able to deliver a full report to Core Central Consciousness - a Parasite SPY Kbot would make it, but could give only a basic account, whereas a Decoy Commander had the data technology but wouldn't make it five steps without every unit in the area locking on to it. They had no choice. They didn't have the time to construct enough Decoy Commanders to offset the chances of them all being destroyed before any made it to the Gate, so Core had to gamble and send the Commander.  
  
  
It was a millions-to-one chance, but nevertheless it happened. The Arm Commander was making his way, cloaked, to the focal point of the attack against the Core base, when he inadvertently stepped within the Core Commander's cloaking radius. Even though the battle suits had a remarkably small sighting radius (that is, a 'circle' within which a unit could perceive the cloaked unit), the Arm Commander's was slightly smaller than the Core Commander's, enabling him to see the enemy Commander without it seeing him. He managed to manoeuvre away quickly enough so that his cloaking radius was not compromised. Deciding that this would be an ideal opportunity, he instantly handed all control of Arm units to his trusty second-in-command via the sub-inter communications band, informing her that he would be returning soon and would report in at his next destination. Cutting off her squawking protests, he set his suit's controls to just keep him in sight of the Core Commander, but keep out of its sight. It might just be worth the trouble...  
  
The Core Commander reached the Gate without interference, and began the interface. Surprisingly, the Core Prime Gate opened to the access codes with little questioning. The pool of quicksilver opened up before a pair of ruthless eyes, and the Commander stepped in, seconds in advance of the Ruling Council realising that a transfer was in progress and shutting the Gate down.  
  
The Arm Commander barely made it through the Gate. The pool had only just swallowed him when the Ruling Council shut down the workings of the Gate, and he accelerated to interspeed cursing them all the way to Core Prime and back. He quickly checked his destination, and found with no surprise that he was headed directly for the Core homeworld. He notified the Ruling Council, and prepared for the experience.  
He eventually stepped out onto an almost featureless steel platform with no other landscape to be seen; in fact, nothing was to be seen from his position, except a single elevator shaft, and...  
There was a click as three Disintegrator Guns locked onto him. As he instinctively half-turned, the elevator door slid open and three commandos jumped out and trained their D-Guns on him. He made a gesture of surrender, and his battle suit's systems went into automatic shutdown.  
  
*****  
  
The Core Commander reached out an arm and began the downloading process at the closest access terminal. The mind flowed freely from the battle suit into Core Prime's circuitry, and raced off to make its official report to the Central Consciousness.  
  
*****  
  
The tortured ex-captive mind sped along the circuits, desperately seeking a way out. It was tiring fast - flowing along circuits was not completely effortless, and it had covered many, many miles since its release. Surely, somewhere along here, there must be a way out, a way to get out of these damned circuit-boards!  
  
  
High above the metal world of Core Prime, Prefect Celarii Retala rested on her silken couch, with red satin cushions, enjoying the Core adopted mother-star Erytri's heat for the first time in her life. Patterned at the age of 1 3/4, she had only ever been in a synthetic biological body twice since then. This was one of those times. Taken from her home planet Ocrea by the Core patterners (whence she later returned and stood for Prefect), she had been above Core Prime's metal structures for about 2 years of her 500-year life. 500 years ago, Ocrea had been a backwater planet, going nowhere, just coasting. Then Core had come along and developed the planet into a maze of metal extractors, geothermal power plants, solar collectors, wind turbines and so on. Ocrea had been drained quickly of all its metallic resources, but Core still chose to exploit the planet for its exceptionally bright sunlight and strong winds. A large portion of Core's energy budget came from Ocrea, and Celarii was proud to be Prefect, representative of her people. She reclined her couch backward, drinking in Erytri's heat and wondering what her fifty-seventh husband, Orno, was doing at the moment. He, too, was on the ship, basking in his new-found freedom in a synthetic body. She slowly drifted off to sleep, thinking about her all-too-short childhood on Ocrea...  
  
*****  
  
Rushing down yet another circuit, the tormented mind collided with the mind of the Core Commander coming the other way. Surprised, and thinking it was a defensive mechanism, it delivered a massive ion surge directly into the heart of the patterned mind.  
  
The Commander screeched inwardly and its consciousness writhed with agony and pulsating pain. It backtracked quickly and raced away along a side-track.  
  
  
Far, far away, on the secluded plant of Barathrum, a single Core Construction Kbot lurched unsteadily to a halt and creaked madly as its nanolathe extended and began the slow, slow process of construction of a Kbot lab. This Kbot was the sole survivor of a kamikaze Arm attack upon Core's secondary base upon the planet. Five bases had been established, and now all except the primary and tertiary had been wiped out. Arm had performed a suicide attack, diverting all forces from their assault on the heavily-defended primary base to the secondary one as soon as they discovered that the Core Commander of Barathrum was making a 'state visit' to the base to aid in the construction of an Intimidator heavy antimatter cannon. Arm had thrown all available units into the attack, overwhelming primary defences in seconds and breaking through all lines within about a minute. Mass carnage had ensued, and various attempts to evacuate the Commander by air were foiled. Eventually Core forces were completely routed and the attack centred upon the Commander, who stood alone. Instead of simply attacking in small groups, while the others held back out of the blast radius, the Arm battalions pressed in, swarming like bees round a honey-pot. The Commander was destroyed, and with him went all the Arm units in the vicinity. Additional troops came far too late, finding nothing but a charred hulk of steaming metal which had been the Commander. Ah well, the Construction Kbot mused to itself, the reinforcements will be here very soon, and then...  
Its neural matrix practically overloaded with fear as it saw a wave of Arm tanks, Kbots, hovercraft and aircraft crest the hill in front of it. More units than it could ever remember seeing in one place before rolled, flew, or rumbled towards it. In its last seconds of life before it was bombarded into oblivion, it sent a desperate message to the oncoming Core forces...  
  
  
The suffering mind finally made it to an output circuit and downloaded itself into the waiting machine outside. As its visual sensors clicked and whirred in an effort to focus, the mind wondered why all military units within sight were down on one knee, as though worshipping. As the battle suit whirred into life, prepared for a quick getaway, the closest unit's voice came through hoarsely,  
"What is your will, Highness?'  
Highness?, thought the mind. This can't be right! Who am I?  
It called up the head-up display and asked for a 'most frequent occupant' check.  
Oh my...  
  
The Arm Commander sat dejectedly in his cell. Had he really thought that he could accomplish anything by following the enemy Commander to the enemy homeworld, where security would doubtless be so tight that not even an Empyrreanian gnat could possibly make it through the defence web? Now he was stripped of his battle suit, and left cold and alone in an ancient detention cell.  
  
The escapee consciousness, now imprisoned in a battle suit from which the only retreat was to download back into the dangerous network of circuits on Core Prime, quickly formulated a plan. It had to get out of here - but how, without attracting attention from security? Easy. If this was the body of the ruling mind of the Core Central Consciousness, anything was possible!  
  
  
On Barathrum, Core reinforcements had just arrived, following the distress signal from the Construction Kbot. On arrival, they found a cloud of green vapour in the vague shape of a Kbot lab in the process of dissipation, and a single smoking heap of metallic rubble. Instantly, they reported this development back to the Command HQ of Barathrum. The HQ made interspatial contact with Core Prime within seconds, and hundreds of battlecraft, spawncraft and patterncraft were dispatched to shore up the Core forces. However, speedy though this communication was, it could not hope to compete with Arm efficiency. The reinforcements were cut off and encircled, and mercilessly pounded. Merl rockets streaked into the thick of the melee; the area echoed to the sound of Bulldog plasma cannon; units paralysed by Spider tanks could only sit and wait for their inevitable destruction.  
  
*****  
  
The mind, learning through the constant updates to the battlesuit that the sole surviving Arm Commander was now captured and located in a detention cell somewhere just off Thoroughfare 88, called for a Valkyrie transport to transport it at top speed to this detention cell.  
  
The Arm Commander lay back on his hard wooden bench and pondered the seemingly inevitable victory of Core over the Arm rebellion. Without him as a focus, the Ruling Council would doubtless disintegrate into a squabbling rabble ruled by bureaucracy. Suddenly, without warning, the door activated, and someone stepped through. Someone, it seemed, in the highest degree of Commander-grade battle suit available. Two guards stepped through with the Commander, and an imperious tone rang through the cell,  
"Take him to my personal space yacht!"  
  
*****  
  
On Barathrum, the acting Core Commander was getting worried. She was only a decoy, and her neural circuits didn't contain all the knowledge and intuition she needed to lead a counterattack. Arm forces were pressing in all around. The tertiary base was close to falling, and with it over two-thirds of Core's resource generators. Then the primary base would be next in line, for all its Doomsday Machines and Punisher plasma cannon. What good were Doomsday Machines without the energy to fire them? Core's long-term battle plan had centred on the tertiary base not being found and not being destroyed. Now their advanced radar was down, and none of their Punisher cannon could be targeted on the Arm units attacking the more lightly-defended tertiary base.  
  
The Arm units were definitely winning the battle. Their Level-2 tanks and Kbots easily outnumbered the Level-1 defenders and stationary defences two to one, and the advantage was telling greatly. At one point, Core Level-2 reinforcements, including a large number of Goliaths and Reaper tanks, tried to break through to the beleaguered base, but the valiance and vigilance of Zeus Squadron 4 prevented the counterattack, which would otherwise have gone unnoticed, being protected by radar jammers. As it was, the tanks were ambushed by Squadron 4, and, despite their superior numbers, many of them were taken down by the powerful lightning guns before they could bring their slow plasma cannon to bear on the Zeus Kbots. Only one-third of Squadron 4 made it back to the main attack, but they were instantly recommended for bravery. Sontira Fel was given a special commendation - ten Goliath heavy tanks were destroyed by her incredible skill and accuracy. Her Kbot was repaired, and several Zippers and Fidos were assigned to guard her. Soon she would be escorted back to Empyrrean with all honour, to receive promotion from the Ruling Council.  
  
  
Back on Empyrrean, the battlecraft had sought out the cloaking satellite, and it was now reduced to a few metallic shards of metal whizzing in orbit around the green planet. The fate of Core on Arm's own home planet was now sealed. The Annihilators began to unfold, the Vulcan made a few minor adjustments in its aim, the Big Berthas primed their antimatter slivers.  
And, silently, swiftly, carefully, Core attacked.   
The attack was carefully premeditated. It was engineered, not as a single attack in force, but a surgical strike against the Arm attackers. This was no tank rush, but a cautious attack, controlled and co-ordinated by the Core Commander, who had by now reached Central Consciousness and made intercomm linkup with the forces. A surprising amount of mechanical force poured forth, and before Arm could react, two Guardians were gone, the Vulcan attacked by several Rapier gunships, the Arm forces thrown into a disorderly jumble, and a critical Annihilator energy cannon heavily damaged. However, under the guidance of the Ruling Council's most adept tactician, Arm reorganised themselves quickly and launched a counterattack. Although a lot of their long-range artillery had been the victims of surgical Core targeting, a large amount of their infantry remained intact. As Wombat rocket-launcher hovercraft raced to the scene to begin decimating Core forces with their rockets, the Arm units rallied around Zeus Squadron 4 again, who were passing through on their way to receive special commendations from the Ruling Council. Sontira Fel excelled herself again - not even the master tactician outdid her. She quickly formed the Arm forces into four groups: the fast-attack units, the tank-crushers, the artillery, and the main infantry. The main infantry were to engage the enemy from the front, while the fast-attack forces circled round and came at the Core forces from behind, in a two-edged pincer movement. The tank-crushers were ordered to attack from the two sides, cutting through the Core armies until they met, and the artillery were designated to sit back and pound the Core units from a distance.  
The plan was an overwhelming success. Core, finding themselves attacked from all four sides, panicked. Units from the rearguard found themselves targeting Arm soldiers far in front, whilst being peppered by laser shots from behind. Units from either side didn't know where to target. Routed and confused, the Core units fled in a ragged mob - just as the fire from the Big Berthas began to rain down upon them. A.K. 57/23R was the only one to escape alive. Dazed and bewildered, he zigzagged down the valley, desperately trying to evade the target locks of the Big Berthas, Annihilators and the now-enraged and vengeful Vulcan. His motors moving at maximum speed, he managed to make it to the Galactic Gate. Caring not where he went, nor how hostile the reception was, he dived in, just as three Annihilator shots hit the ground where he had stood a second ago.  
Racing through the silvery currents of interspace, he made interspatial contact with Core Central Consciousness, and reported the complete defeat and destruction of all Core forces on Empyrrean, save himself. As he sped onwards, he managed to tap into the Gate on Empyrrean and find his destination.  
  
*****  
  
Prefect Celarii Retala tripped down the corridor of her pleasure yacht to the galley, and ordered a Volantian treefrog casserole, well done. She was determined not to miss out on the chance of testing her synthetic tastebuds. Humming softly, she made her way down to the engine room, where Orno was practising his favourite hobby - tinkering about with the engines.  
"Dinner is served, darling," she trilled.  
"It looks marvellous, honey. I hope you didn't go to too much trouble over me,' Orno replied.  
"Oh no, four presses of a button isn't too much to do for you!" she laughed. "Come eat."  
At that precise moment, the intertransfer booth in the corner of the room lit up with a silver nimbus, indicating an incoming transfer. The haze gradually died away before their astonished eyes, revealing the battle-scarred, smoking metal body of an A.K. It slowly teetered forward, then fell to the floor with a crash that made Celarii and Orno jump. As they leant forward, they could hear the grinding noises of damaged machinery, along with a faint repeated twitter:  
"all destroyed...all destroyed...all destroyed..."  
  
*****  
  
Alone with what appeared to be the sole surviving Core High Commander, the Arm Commander couldn't help but be nervous. He knew his battle suit was aboard the ship somewhere (he'd seen them loading it on), but he wasn't sure where. One thing was for certain, though - if he made one false move, that big Disintegrator Gun would doubtless blast him into microscopic particles.  
Surprisingly, the Core Commander didn't seem to take a second look at him - it seemed to be too busy checking to see that the surveillance cameras were working. He wondered briefly about making a run for it, but just then the huge arm that held to D-Gun swivelled around to face him, and a faint, almost inaudible whisper emanated from the suit's vocoder.  
"Look, I don't think we're being overheard, but I can't tell for sure, so keep your voice down," whispered the Commander. "We're going to get you out of here, if I can just figure out how to get the Stellar Princess into interspace. My name is Risea."  
As it finished talking, the suit turned again and pressed a button on the wall keypad. A section of the wall slid away to reveal a secret compartment and...the Commander's battle suit!  
He lost no time in getting into it, and then joined his new-found ally at the controls of the Stellar Princess. By that time his sensors had told him that though the other suit was occupied by a patterned mind, it was an Arm-allied mind, and a female one at that. Together, they managed to override the auto-locks holding them to the planet's surface, and lifted effortlessly off, leaving the metal surface behind them without so much as a slight blackening. The ship ascended slowly into orbit at sub-inter velocity, but refused to go into interspace. It seemed that the interspatial matrix was coded to a certain brainwave pattern - that of the true Core Commander.  
Suddenly, alarms began to blare, lights to flash, and an artificial voice began to squeak, "Warning! Warning! This ship is being targeted!"  
Seven newly-commissioned Core battlecraft, their insignias gleaming, powered their way towards the yacht, engines shrieking. Their weapon towers swivelled as their targeting sensors locked onto the ship.  
The ship's autopilot console began to smoke, the autopilot stretched beyond it's capacity; the vessel hacked around wildly, trying desperately to evade the lasers and plasma cannon being fired at it. Quickly, the Arm Commander took over manual control, pumped engine power to full, and dived for the relative safety of the shadow of Dump, Core Prime's artificially-constructed garbage moon. Risea diverted more power to shields and weapons, and began counterfire. This being one of the most powerful space yachts in the galaxy, its weaponry was impressive, and took out two of the battlecraft on the first shot.  
Chased by the remaining five battlecraft, the Stellar Princess swept around Dump, guns blazing, and used the moon's gravity to build up velocity. The ship shot out from Dump's other side, her engines protesting wildly at this rough treatment. The ship almost crashed into another craft, and then its engines died. Desperately wondering what had happened, the Commanders found out when the visiscreen shimmered into life, and the head and shoulders of General Karno Kara appeared.  
"Surrender the Princess and head back to the planet, or you will be destroyed. You have thirty seconds in which to comply," barked the image.  
The next thirty seconds were filled with feverish activity. The Commanders worked frantically to programme the ship's autopilot, and then used the manoeuvring thrusters to edge closer to the craft into which they had almost crashed. At the touch of a button, the intertransfer booth was coaxed into a short range transfer...  
  
...and both Commanders materialised in the corner of Celarii and Orno's dining quarters. Their eyes quickly took in the scene: a battle-scarred A.K. lay twitching on the floor, two patterns in synthetic bodies, one male and one female, stood frozen against the wall, and a dish of Volantian treefrog casserole, broken, lay steaming on the floor. Quickly, Risea stretched out her nanolathe and began the capturing process of the A.K. The Arm Commander waved his laser threateningly at the two people.  
"Don't try anything stupid, unless you want your synthetic insides burning to a crisp. Who are you?"  
The woman stepped forward and addressed Risea, in the guise of the Core Commander.  
"I am Prefect Celarii Retala of the Core colony on Ocrea. I demand to know what is going on, and will be lodging a formal complaint with the Central Consciousness."  
  
Risea, who had by now completed the capturing process of the A.K. and just begun the repairing process, swung round and glared straight at the woman.  
"Well, Prefect Celarii Retala," she mimicked mincingly, "let you know that this is not the Core High Commander to whom you speak. My name is Risea, and I am a liberated soul, freed from the tyrannical clutches of your beloved Core. Be thankful that I do not gun you down on the spot!"  
Leaving the Prefect and her husband grovelling on the floor of the trans-inter room, the Arm Commander, Risea and the newly-converted A.K. raced up to the control room. The five remaining Core battlecraft were in hot pursuit of the Core Commander's yacht, whose autopilot was taking it on a dizzying run down into Core Prime's atmosphere. Flicking a few controls, Risea brought up the ship's inventory...and then gave a long, low whistle.  
"Hey, Arm boy," she murmured, "come over here and take a look at this!"  
On the inventory panel, the schematics of four identical experimental Kbots rotated smoothly. The description above the schematics read:  
-The Core Necro: an experimental Resurrection Kbot which has spent the last month on trial on the backwater planet of Ocrea. Now, the only four prototypes of this technology are being shipped to Core Prime, ready to be prepared for mass production. These Kbots are constructed by the Advanced Kbot lab, and have the power to resurrect any chunk of metal. The resurrected unit will automatically defect to Core, and, once revived, will be repaired by the Necro-  
  
"Wow!" the Arm Commander exclaimed. "So that's what Core has been working on all this time!"  
"You knew about this?!" challenged Risea incredulously.  
"Well...we intercepted a few encoded Core transmissions, and what we could decode contained the words 'new', 'project' and 'top secret'."  
Suddenly, without warning, alarms began to ring, and red lights to flash. An automated voice began to squeak:  
"Alert! Alert! Intruders on the bridge! Automatic jettison of all cargo imminent!"  
Quickly, Risea, the Arm Commander and the A.K. started to jab at the keypads, desperately trying to stop the ejection of the four precious Necros. One by one, their schematics disappeared from the inventory display. The last one was just about to fly out of the cargo bay when, by a stroke of luck, the A.K. found the security code. Alarms ceased to ring, voices ceased to squeak, and the final Necro stayed safely within the confines of the cargo bay.  
  
*****  
  
Back on Barathrum, the last of the Core forces were surrounded, and being pounded! Their tertiary base had fallen, their Fusion Reactors and Moho Mines destroyed. Construction units had been deployed in desperation to construct a new base, but chances of success were slim - metal and energy were being used up as quickly as they were being produced. Few units remained, and fewer factories. Not long ago, Core had thought itself invincible on this planet; now their dominance was reduced to a tenuous hold on existence. Their only hope lay in the swift arrival of a Core patternfleet.  
  
The Arm Commander of Barathrum allowed himself a self-satisfied smirk. Core structures and units all over the planet were being totalled, and smoking metal wrecks littered the landscape. A good many of Core's structures had been captured - most of the non-offensive ones, such as resource generators, factories and so on, as well as the occasional defensive structure which had fallen prey to the Spider hunting packs and Overseers. The development of Overseer technology, though quickly 'appropriated' by Core, had been a big step forward. These 'neo-Commanders' had the ability to build most structures (they did not yet have the endowment of factory-building), were able to capture enemy units and structures, and were even equipped with their own D-Guns! These units, once commissioned by Arm, roamed Barathrum freely, disintegrating or capturing everything in their wake.  
"I wonder if the last of the aircraft are gone yet," mused Commander Aretec Ythoma to himself. He had waited to send in his huge stock of Brawler gunships and Phoenix advanced bombers until his Hawks had successfully cleared the skies of all opposition. At last report, three Vamps, a Rapier and a Hurricane still remained to 'terrorise' the skies - the Hawk wolf-packs had targeting locks on two of the Vamps and the Hurricane, and were closing in fast, missiles racing towards their panicked targets.  
Flipping over to the live holocam from the tertiary base, he ordered Hawk Wolf-pack Four to target the final Vamp, but suddenly saw that this would be unnecessary. A single Shooter cloakable sniper Kbot, currently invisible to all Core units, drew its Annihilator pistol, swung round, targeted the Vamp and fired. The pilot must have panicked, for the tiny plane swung from left to right, left to right. The blue beam rushed towards it, and just when it seemed that the Vamp would successfully evade, a freak air current flung it, spinning, straight into the path of the blue laser. The shot intersected directly with the Vamp's path, and hit it bang in the centre, wiping out what was left of its shielding and weak hull.  
BOOM! The Vamp blew up spectacularly, spraying red-hot debris around the entire area.  
"Waste of power," the Commander snorted. "Stupid ships barely have a hull to call their own!"  
Checking his sensors and status reports, he saw that the last remaining Core aircraft had been neutralised. He quickly switched to all frequencies, and barked into his communications centre:  
"Right, all Brawlers and Phoenixes, the skies are now safe. Destroy your assigned targets first, and then take out any other offensive units and structures."  
He looked out of the reinforced clear-duraplastic view window at the numerous air repair stations inside the base, and saw with satisfaction hordes of Brawler gunships and Phoenix bombers rise from the repair pads and streak off, ready to aid in the elimination of all Core forces from Barathrum. Soon!  
  
*****  
  
Commander Releas Nari, of the Core Fourth Patternfleet's Flagship, the Class 2 Flagship Emancipator, fidgeted impatiently, waiting for the seemingly endless trip through interspace to end. Because of the relative slowness of the patterncraft that were assigned to the Fourth Fleet, all the vessels could only move at that speed - the 'slowest unit' syndrome that most Core fleets suffered these days.  
At last, after what seemed like aeons, all the ships popped out of interspace, one after the other, the sluggish yet irritatingly essential patterncraft last.  
What Releas Nari saw next almost gave him a fear-circuit overload...  
An entire Arm Defence Fleet lay before him, fully prepared for spatial combat. The new, up-to-the-minute craft were easily a match for his older, more outdated ships, even without their superior numbers.  
And their numbers definitely were superior! His tactical readouts showed, quite clearly, that the opposing fleet outnumbered his by at least five to one. Even as his artificial neurones, almost paralysed with fear, transferred this information to his neural net, he was almost screaming orders into the comm link in from of him.  
"All craft, prepare for emergency interspatial retreat! Patterncraft, drop as many pattern pods as you can before you are forced to leave. Repeat, full retreat!"  
  
  
Aboard the Arm flagship Assailant, Admiral Tereana Una turned to her bridge crew and grinned.  
"Right, boys and girls, this is it! Form assault tetrahedron...and go for it!"  
The Arm ships moved into the designated formation, and moved forward at maximum sublight speed...  
  
  
Back aboard the Emancipator, Releas Nari was having severe problems. His manoeuvring thrusters had burnt out, leaving him with no way to realign his ship with the interspace vector needed to get the hell out of there. He steeled his artificial nerves, and began to surf a wave of synthadrenaline.  
"The Emancipator will stay behind as a rearguard. Good luck, everyone."  
All craft with the ability to transport personnel and achieve interspace travel were duly launched carrying all personnel save a skeleton bridge crew. These craft quickly accelerated to interspeed and vanished, heading for Core Prime.  
Whirling back to the viewscreen, Nari saw the Arm craft bearing down on them, led by the Assailant.  
"Fire! Give them everything we've got!"  
  
  
The Assailant shuddered once, twice, thrice as the blasts from the Emancipator impacted against its shields.  
"Shields still holding, Commander," the tactical officer reported.  
"Good." replied Una. "Let's repay the favour shall we? Fire!"  
  
  
Even as the deadly bursts of fire raced toward the Emancipator, Releas Nari's artificial neurones were still firing, allowing stray impulses to reach his brain.  
As the Emancipator's shields and hull were wiped out in one shot, and her reactor sent into terminal overload, Releas's last despairing thoughts were of his fifty-seventh wife...  
  
*****  
  
On board the Ocrean Dream, until recently the ship of Prefect Celarii Retala, Risea, the Arm Commander and the A.K. were holding a hurried council of war.  
"Believe me," the A.K. urged, "I know the Core Prime defence grid. This ship doesn't stand a chance!"  
"We must flee now," counselled Risea.  
"Very well," murmured the Arm Commander.  
Turning back to the control panels, they forced the Dream to dive for the relative safety of interspace. Desperately setting the first co-ordinates that came to mind from the vast storage of location data available to him, the Arm Commander punched in the location of Barathrum, and the ship was on its way at maximum interspeed.  
For a second, the Dream hung in realspace; then the stars striated around them and they dropped silently into interspace.  
  
*****  
  
Core were now almost completely wiped from the face of Barathrum. The fleeing patterncraft had only had time to drop a few score of pattern pods, and the troops from these had been forced to dig themselves in and fight for dear life. Now very few of them remained to challenge the overwhelming might of the Arm forces. All the Core factories were no more, their Commander had been destroyed, they had only a few enduring construction units, and their armies had dwindled until they had nearly disappeared. It wouldn't be long till Arm established complete dominance over Barathrum and its rich energy production capabilities.  
  
*****  
  
"Sir!"  
"Yes, Poraal, what is it?" snapped the Core Commander of Barathrum.  
"Well, Sir, we've managed to salvage a spacecraft from those which crash-landed onto the planet following the panic after the Arm fleet left interspace. I'd say it's just about big enough for the entire remaining Core army on this planet to fit into. I've got the navigational array back online, and I've plotted an interspatial microjump which will take us to within Barathrum's sensor shadow relative to the Arm fleet. If we leave now, we can salvage what's left of our forces, Sir."  
"Leave Barathrum?" Never in the history of Core had a force flown from its target with its objective uncompleted. The directive was very much, "Come back with the planet or don't come back at all". The idea was unthinkable! And yet...  
Under these circumstances they didn't stand a chance of winning. There was no possibility that they could complete their objective, and to stay merely in order to be wiped out was absurd! It was time to challenge protocol...  
"Very well, Poraal, begin loading our forces onto the craft." said the Commander. "What is its designation?"  
"The ship is called the Flight of Fancy, sir."  
"How appropriate," mused the Commander wryly.  
  
*****  
  
Alarms began to shrill aboard the Dream. By this time, Celarii and Orno were incarcerated in two stasis booths, frozen in time until further notice. However, all was not well. Core had dispatched seven of its fastest battlecraft to recapture the Dream and reclaim its precious cargo of newly-developed Necros. If the Dream could not successfully evade them, it would be destroyed - it was a pleasure yacht, not built for fighting, with little shielding and a weak hull. The only reason Core had used it to transport the valuable Necros was, ironically, as protection. Arm fleets had been heading for Ocrea at the time of takeoff, and a high-class battlecruiser high-tailing it from the scene would have been bound to arouse suspicion, whereas a lowly pleasure yacht would be easily overlooked - just a petty Core bureaucrat fleeing for the protection of Core Prime and the Central Consciousness.  
"Hey, Commander," murmured Risea, "where're we taking this scrap-heap-with-an-interdrive?"  
"To Barathrum," the Arm Commander replied, "currently Arm's mightiest stronghold apart from Empyrrean. The last vestiges of Core resistance are even now being obliterated."  
  
And they were. The last Core base had been discovered, but to the Core Decoy Commander's surprise, the discovering units (a Bulldog scavenger pack) had held back, firing only a few shots at any Core unit that came close enough to be a threat. Now they had withdrawn completely, seemingly allowing Core to continue loading the tattered remnants of its once-immense occupation army onto the single spacecraft. This craft had also once been mighty, but most of its weaponry had been destroyed in the crash. A couple of energy shell launchers, such as those found on the highest tier of a Doomsday Machine, still remained, as did the few plasma cannon whose ammunition had not destroyed them in the crash. Also, its hull was badly damaged, held together only in places by a few quickly-nanolathed patches of metal, a structural integrity field, and a lot of hope. Unfortunately, it was the only craft available to Core, and every mobile unit was being loaded onto it.  
Suddenly, without warning, assault alarms began to sound, and then just as suddenly they were cut off. Scanning the area, the Core Decoy Commander quickly located the source of the short-lived alarm - what used to be a Gaat Gun, now a rapidly-expanding cloud of tiny particles. Swiftly replaying the holovid uplink of the Gaat Gun's last few seconds, the Commander flinched inwardly as a blue Annihilator beam raced towards the camera. A split second after it intersected with the Gaat Gun, the uplink failed, and everything went white...  
This was apparently the signal for a widespread artillery attack on the final Core base. Big Bertha antimatter slivers rained down upon unsuspecting units & buildings, incredibly inaccurate, but still managing to take down at least two units for every three shells. Annihilator energy shells decimated the base with pinpoint accuracy. Guardian plasma cannon hailed down their deadly fire upon the remaining Core structures.  
The Decoy Commander quickly opened channels of communication as she forced her suit to the limit, moving with agonising slowness towards the Flight of Fancy.  
"Decoy 1 to Flight of Fancy. Begin takeoff procedure immediately."  
Then, after switching the channel to a wide-band all-frequency one:  
"All remaining Core units, board the Flight of Fancy if you can. It's every pattern for themselves, folks. Get aboard if you can. If you can't, good luck and run."  
The Decoy just made it to the ship before the boarding ramp closed. The second her foot touched the ramp, an Annihilator shell hit her full-on in the chest, frying her suit's controls and coming within a millimetre of puncturing her antimatter chamber. Her suit creaked to a halt, but luckily the ramp closed just in time to prevent the next shell from obliterating her totally.  
  
By now, almost all of the remaining Core units & building had been destroyed. Of the offensive structures & factories, one heavily damaged Vehicle Plant, two Gaat Guns, one Weasel and one Goliath super-tank were the only ones left. Everything else was either non-offensive (and therefore earmarked by Arm for future capturing) or loaded aboard the Fancy.  
Just as the first Arm unit came into visual range of the Fancy (until now, the long-range cannon had been targeting using the radar map), the lift-off sequence was completed and the Fancy began to lift off, all her guns blazing, laying down covering fire until she was out of Arm range.  
Just a little way away, only just out of visual range, the Arm Commander's second-in-command Overseer rushed up to him.  
"Sir," he panted, "they're cutting their losses and fleeing in a spacecraft! If we don't act soon they'll have escaped!"  
Inside his helmet, the Commander's face twisted into a cold smile as he opened a channel to the five specially prepared Annihilators.  
"Fire."  
Five bolts of blue lightning sped towards the Flight of Fancy. Astounded, the assembled troops saw them hit the ship in quick succession, wiping out the minimal shielding, blowing off the quick patch jobs, tearing apart the hull and rupturing the interspatial drive core.  
With a single soundless explosion, the Fancy disintegrated in a cloud of debris and a blinding light. Then, after what seemed an eternity, sound finally caught up with its elusive cousin, light, and the noise clapped its massive hands over every cloned ear and mechanical receiver for miles.  
  
*****  
  
Sontira Fel emerged from the Galactic Gate just in time to see the Flight of Fancy struck down by five blue Annihilator laser bolts, and hear the Commander's victory cry echo on all communication channels. She had been sent by the Arm Ruling Council, along with her newly assigned tank squad, to help oversee the final destruction of all Core forces on Barathrum, but obviously the Arm Commander needed no further help. She was about to turn her new Bulldog tank round and go back into the Galactic Gate when her head-up display crackled and the view-plate of the Arm High Commander appeared on her comm screen. Static filled the screen, and Sontira's signal boosters activated automatically.  
  
'All Arm forces on Barathrum," the face said, "prepare for the biggest battle any of you have ever seen. We're on our way in a stolen luxury yacht containing a prototype of the latest Core Kbot development, and we've got a whole Core Assault Fleet on our tail. We'll arrive in two hours' time, three hours before they do, but you'll still be facing a big challenge. If we can convert this technology for our usage, we'll be able to reconstruct any heap of metal into the unit or structure it once was. It could be invaluable. Please, be ready."  
The rest of the message was rendered unintelligible by static. Core were obviously jamming all communications. Sontira wondered briefly how they managed to get this one communication out, but her thoughts were cut off by the Commander of Barathrum broadcasting on all frequencies.  
"OK, all you clones, listen up. We have just over five hours to ready ourselves for the onslaught of a Core Assault Fleet. I have already transmitted a request for a Defence Fleet to be dispatched to this location, but we'll have to deal with the ground troops. All factories and construction units, begin building at maximum capacity. We'll need 100% radar coverage, as many units as you can give us..."  
There was more of the same, but Sontira deactivated her comm, setting it to listen for specific orders to her tank squad. In the silence that followed before every factory and construction unit went to work, she wondered if any of them would survive the coming confrontation...  
  
*****  
  
The Arm High Commander was wondering the exact same thing. When the seven battlecraft had failed to match the speed of the Dream, Core had dispatched an entire Assault Fleet from Core Prime to try and rescue the Necro. That meant enough ships to reduce the planet of Barathrum to nothing more than an asteroid belt, and enough patterncraft to take on the biggest Arm force ever built. Luckily, Core only had three of these Assault Fleets, but this was the biggest. The other two put together would have only made up a quarter of the force of this one. This was Core's Prime Assault Fleet, and against it Arm stood little chance.  
However, the defending force on Barathrum now had five hours to prepare itself, and three Arm Defence Fleets were even now streaking through interspace to protect Barathrum from spatial bombardment. It would be a close thing, but the Commander trusted his forces, and was sure they would not fail.  
Suddenly, a scream echoed through the ship. He raced down to the inter-transfer room, and found Risea with her head in her hands, her voice box emitting a high-pitched, piercing screech.  
Quickly, he knelt down beside her. The scream tailed off, and she began to babble, the words tumbling out in an endless, unintelligible stream. He caught something about 'invaded' and 'battle', but nothing more than that.  
Finally, her head snapped up towards him. Though the suit's faceplate was opaqued, he could sense the anguish she was going through, but he didn't know exactly why or what had happened.  
Slowly, the stream of words stumbled, and came to an eventual halt. Risea's voice came again, coherent and in complete control.  
"My mind has been invaded by another pattern. It is attempting to take control of the suit. I have subdued it...for now, but it will be back. If it should take the suit, you must place it in suspended animation. If you cannot...", her voice broke, "you must destroy the suit, and me along with it. This pattern has managed to lock out all my access to all the suit's files - all I have are my own memories. You must get me out of here."  
Suddenly, the Arm Commander had an idea. He raced down to the suspended animation booths and found the one containing Celarii Retala's synthetic body. He deactivated the booth, and she slumped forward, falling unconscious to the floor. Quickly, he captured the body, then removed her pattern from it and placed the patternchip back in the suspended animation field. He took the body up to the room where Risea still lay, and downloaded her pattern into it. Instantly, the suit froze. Risea's soft voice came from behind him:  
"Be careful. I think that's the suit's rightful owner. We'd best get it off the ship before it regains dominance. I managed to put a fair number of defences between it and motor control. For now, cross your fingers and hope."  
They rushed the suit down to the intertransfer booth, deciding this was the best way to get rid of it. The Commander tapped in a set of random co-ordinates, and Risea initiated transfer. Later, they would both swear that, a split-second before the silvery nimbus that was interspace engulfed the Core Commander's suit, the faceplate came to life, its holographic representation of a face twisted in anger and pure hatred.  
  
Far away, an interspace portal opened, and a single Commander suit tumbled lazily through realspace. Within seconds, the pattern inside had regained total control, ascertained that there were Core ships in the vicinity, and called for pickup. The fight was not over yet...  
  
On Barathrum, every single factory and construction unit was working to its utmost capacity. Commander Aretec Ythoma and his loyal Overseers were lending their nanolathe power to as many projects as they could. Within seconds of finishing one, metal and energy would be streaming forth into another. Factories, units, defensive structures, resource generators - all these and more were under desperate construction. The Arm Defence fleet, which had proved so efficient at disposing of the Core Patternfleet led by Releas Nari, had been recalled, and was even now setting up a defence web around the planet, hoping to stop any space-to-ground bombardment. Admiral Tereana Una had consented with a will to defending Barathrum until the Necro prototype and plans could be dispatched via the Galactic Gate. No other form of interspatial transfer was safe - the prototype was fragile, and they didn't know how it would stand up to the stresses and strains placed on anything which went through a normal intertransfer booth. Galactic Gates were still the safest and least risky method of interspace travel in the Galaxy. If one could be established in another Galaxy - as three Arm secret projects had attempted, and all failed miserably - then intergalactic colonisation would become a reality, and Arm would spread to millions, perhaps even billions, of new worlds. Of course, whichever of this Galaxy's two main powers - Arm or Core - could accomplish this first would soon become the ruling clique of the Universe!  
The defence web was ready. There was no time to call for reinforcements - there were under four hours remaining to them, and any help would not arrive for over nine hours. All they could do now was sit, prime their weapons, and wait...  
  
Two hours later, the Dream of Freedom melted back from the quicksilver currents of interspace into the diamond-studded vista of realspace. Before them, Barathrum hung in space, a green-and-blue swirled jewel, peaceful now, but soon to be the site of a massive battle between Arm and Core.  
On the surface, preparations were underway. Thousands of Arm units, ranging from the smallest PeeWee through to the biggest Penetrator, were ready. Defensive emplacements were scattered all over the surface - some artificial, composed of Dragon's Teeth, and some natural, stacks of units crouching behind hills or in defiles. The landscape bristled with defensive units - Sentinels humming with stored energy, Big Berthas readying their antimatter slivers, even some Vulcans preparing for their massively destructive long-range bombardment.  
And the Arm Commander looked upon it, and saw that it was good...  
Within seconds, he had gone into action, lending the power of his nanolathe wherever he could. Risea joined him, having requisitioned an Overseer suit for herself. Together, they moved through the massive preparations, lending aid wherever they could. News of their presence spread quickly throughout the continent, and morale was boosted immensely.  
Finally, they reached Barathrum HQ, and, with great ceremony, presented the plans for the Necro to the Commander of Barathrum.  
Within seconds, he had had them duplicated, and a copy was on its way to the Arm Ruling Council via the Galactic Gate, when, suddenly, proximity alarms began to shrill.  



End file.
